Fraud Friday – Complicated Ownership Structures are a Red Flag

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January 24, 2014

By Bob Coleman
Editor, Coleman Report

We normally don’t cover mortgage fraud, but this story of a 25 year fraud by a very defiant South Florida man is a whooper.

Pens the Sun Sentinel . . . . . .

Darryl Burke didn’t just break the law for 25 years, federal authorities say, he defied it — hiding behind aliases while he masterminded millions of dollars worth of fraud, lived it up at his South Florida waterfront “compound” and used his Miami Heat courtside seats to hobnob with celebrities.

Burke, 50, of Delray Beach, started committing mortgage and bank fraud back in 1988, long before those crimes became fashionable and widespread, court records show.

Federal prison sentences briefly halted his offenses, prosecutors said, but did nothing to change his ways.

“Burke got out of prison and went right back to work committing fraud,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jerrob Duffy wrote in court records.

Even as the feds were trying to find the chronic fugitive, authorities say he was living under aliases in Broward and Palm Beach counties and ripping off millions of dollars.

And read this telltale quote.

Prosecutors say Burke “has a complicated and deceptive financial picture” that includes “assets and income that cannot be readily identified or traced” partly because of his aliases and shell enteritis and the fact that many of his assets are held in trusts.

Read more about Mr. Burke here.